


Benedictine Monastery of Douai, 4 April 1637

by Anima Nightmate (faithhope)



Series: All For One and, well, you know the rest... [24]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Angst, Aramis Angst, Catholicism, Fantasizing, Franco-Spanish War, Insomnia, Internal Conflict, Internal Dialogue, Latin, M/M, Male Solo, Masturbation, Memories, Monks, Religion, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Shakespeare Quotations, War, Wartime, religious vows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-28 03:15:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16233080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithhope/pseuds/Anima%20Nightmate
Summary: You still take the Lord’s name in vain. Your body observes the offices, but your mind is still vainglorious, verging on the solipsistic, and your soul no closer to God.In a lot of ways, he feels further.It is Lent, for Heaven’s sake, he tells himself.Lent. Abstinence, discipline, contemplation of simplicity in life, encouraging the richness of your soul to flourish in cleared ground.*Another instalment in the long series of pieces based around the black box that is the Musketeers during the Spanish War.





	Benedictine Monastery of Douai, 4 April 1637

He knows what the problem is. What the problems are. There are several reasons.

Firstly: the date, and how it falls on a Saturday, which memory constantly serves to prick you as the day of debauchery _in general_ , never mind the associations with this date. Of all dates.

Secondly: the weather. It has been a fine, blowy, blustering and scampering kind of day, where the wind joshes shoulders with you, ruffles your hair, steals the hat off your head. If you had a hat, which you do not. No more hats. No more finely stitched, made-to-measure boots. No more filigree on the guard of a sword that is being “kept in trust” by the stubbornest woman in France, possibly the world. You know the roads are fully open now, conflict notwithstanding. You know what that means, or would have meant.

Third, and most importantly: your lack of self-discipline. On a grand scale. “You are going to make a terrible religious.” _Oh, dear God, shut up_. And you still take the Lord’s name in vain. Your body observes the offices, but your mind is still vainglorious, verging on the solipsistic, and your soul no closer to God.

In a lot of ways, he feels further.

 _It is Lent, for Heaven’s sake_ , he tells himself. _Lent. Abstinence, discipline, contemplation of simplicity in life, encouraging the richness of your soul to flourish in cleared ground_.

Today is St. Isidore’s Day, and he’d laughed when you told him: “He ain’t gonna suit me, brother – pick me another!” enjoying your mildly scandalised expression, deepening into confusion and mild embarrassment when he’d told you why choosing was so apt, not realising why the confession was so important, so rare.

He often finds it hard to sleep straight after Compline. His body still insists, from time to time, that the night is just beginning. The brothers here are, for the most part, older, and so Matins is not at midnight, but generally an hour before dawn and followed almost immediately by Lauds at dawn itself. He has long nights in which to consider his emptiness.

 _Tomorrow is Sunday – no labour of the body, just contemplation of the spirit and of God Himself_.

The trouble is that labour of the body he has no problem with; relishes, if he’s honest, the chance to keep active, know a burn in his muscles still. Equally: studying, writing, copying – he is accomplished at all of these, and a surgeon’s hands combined with an eye for beauty make for delicate, steady, decorative lines of script and in the margins, but he still… questions. Debates. Queries.

 _I should have been born a Jew_ , he thinks. An old, bad joke, worn even thinner over time. Gnosticism is not encouraged in monks. Or, at least, not in older Benedictine novices with such troubling history (never alluded to explicitly; never punished in the open) – conversi with scars, sword calluses, and habits of seating themselves facing any open door, of moving silently and swiftly, not from reverence, but for safety. Or danger.

 _No sanctuary for me in the scriptorum_. They are clearly afraid that he’ll start adding his own interpretations to texts, or scandalous marginalia. No-one says anything aloud – he is left to speculate.

They are not yet so many that they need a choir, so his fine, if wandering, voice has no way of magnifying the Lord more than any other brother.

“… no, no, no, you just forget all the words…!”

“ _Half_ the words. _Come on!_ ” The ribald laughter of men at ease after a hard day, leaning into their shared warmth, the scattered glow and background clatter of the tavern adding a continuo to their speech. Even Athos is smiling, though he’s been doing more of that lately anyway, and the you of now knows why, knows the reason for that matched pair of bright eyes – light and dark together.

Unless that was before, was just the light of friendship, of the love we _all_ shared.

Alright, that’s comforting, and pure, and okay, there’s a tavern, and shortly afterwards there’s a… okay _two_ women who… Look: friends, companionship, compassion, laughter, comradeship, brotherhood. Warm and content and nothing more or less than how men work in concert, living and striving together daily (especially in the face of death, but let’s forget that for the moment). You’re seeking that here, but maybe just let it come, like it came in Paris, through working together, sharing common experiences, common goals.

His breath comes a little easier. Yes. Yes, that’s working. He is sinking into the dark, lit only by smiles and a few cheap, sizzling torches, floating down, held safe. Hmm. Time to sleep. Ave Maria, gratia plena. Simple bed to his back, Dominus tecum, nearly as hard as a wooden post, Benedicta tua in mulieribus, but quiet and warm and–

 ****A wooden post at his back, the uncertain flicker of rushlight, and focus. He prepares himself for posterity, closes his eyes…

“How about we try it blindfold?,” murmurs a dark and intimate memory. He growls softly and turns over in a thrash of blankets and sheets, relaxation shattered.

God help me. _But it’s not a_ real _prayer, is it? You don’t_ really _want to stop. You don’t want to lose this feeling. Which is only growing, in case you haven’t noticed._

I had, actually. I–

_Well?_

Right. Well. I need to sleep, and I can’t sleep right now, and being poorly rested will impede my utility to my brothers in the morning. I’m going to treat this like a medical issue.

Reduce the swelling. And go to confession tomorrow. Right.

“Or save it for my death bed.” And he closes his eyes in a brief shame.

“You. A little death. Bed,” pants an answering memory. “Yeah, that’s all working…” And, just like that, all pure intentions crumble and he fumbles for himself, pressing through his undershirt, desperately glad that, novice though he is, his very age has granted him a small cell to himself. Mind, as a military man on campaign, he’d long since mastered the art of silent, neat completion in company.

_Military men tend to be able to sleep anywhere, as well._

Not with a thundering erection like this, they don’t. It’s a matter of dealing with it now or risking emission in my sleep, and I’m _definitely_ too old for that.

_You know what the abbot will say to this bit of sophistry, this perilous logic._

I do know. And. And you know what? Shut up; I’m going to do this, and then I’m going to sleep, and then I’ll make a full confession tomorrow. A full confession of my actions.

Focused, determined, he pulls his shirt higher, unlaces and pushes his braies down, kicks them off and treads them under the blankets. As he reaches to take himself in hand, he has to clap the other to his mouth immediately on hearing a groan break forth. It has been entirely too long. He makes it deliberate – thumb hooked on one cheekbone, fingers stretched over the other, palm hard against his lips – then takes another stroke, hears something like a whimper trying to break from his throat. Another and he’s nearly at complete hardness already. He imagines soft, full lips just encircling the tip of himself and relaxes his muffling hand enough to draw the webbing that joins thumb and forefinger between his teeth, where his tongue immediately flicks at it, his lips caressing, and he works his mouth along the length of his finger as his other hand finds and settles into that decades-old rhythm, slow and luxurious instead of a purely medicinal series of strokes to a rough completion.

It’s too late now to pretend that this is anything other than indulgence.

A gift.

He remembers that first birthday, challenge bright in both their eyes, daring each other to greater heights of ridiculousness, both fighting to bury painful pasts in a welter of new memories, seeking sensation, richness, acclaim, brightness, and texture in so many places, together and apart, but always returning in order to tell each other.

His hand falters. Oh hell no – no regrets, just the joy, his eyes bright and dark as berries; that famous smile, flashing brilliant and dimpled; his strength… oh yes, and that strength sundered, writhing against the sheets, a diagram of perfection drawn by Heavenly architects, gasping, my name on his lips, joking right up until the moment he loses himself in my grip, my mouth.

He’s always been vocal – ever since sexual pleasure became something to share with other people, so… always, and no doubt unkind souls would say he learned such a trull’s trick in the house of his childhood, but how could one _not_ , when such a tremor across the senses can reduce a partner to a glorious quiver at evidence of their own desirability, irresistibility? How could one not guide them, celebrate, speak truth?

“ _Mmh_ ,” he lets out and immediately stuffs his whole thumb into his mouth down to the fleshy root. The tip tickles at the back of his throat, summoning memories of the actor, Pierre, telling him not to push himself too far this first time, to pace himself, “oh, oh, if, oh, please, then-then swallow, cough, swallow, relax, yes, fuck yes, Henri, like that, oh, oh _Christ_ , your _tongue_ , oh Henri, God have mercy.” Hands in my hair, alabaster muscles straining beneath me, the taste, dear Heavens, that gorgeous voice calling out his ascent, his fall.

And now it’s his brother-at-arms quivering beneath him, holding back, “don’t hold anything back”, “you may regret that”, I can’t. I can’t regret, and he needs more in his mouth, his other hand firmer, faster, just this side of frantic on him.

Stop. Breathe. Pause. Slower now. Mmh, dear Lord, this is gold and blue paint on an illustration, the flick of a tiny brush when he’s allowed his fingers on them. It’s incense and the curl of voices rising to a vaulted ceiling, bright with the colours tumbling through stained glass. This is the way his body fits together to summon the exquisite, breathing fire and light, the arch of an ecstatic back, three of his own fingers curved and fitting into his mouth, his throat, God, so near-perfectly, the curling touch of his tongue against his flesh, insistent, willing, a dragging sensation of wet and warm and loving. God, yes, _love_ , bright and undeniable.

“ _Hnn!_ ” Teeth in flesh for a moment, the scrape of passion, the drag of a hand that’s mastered so many things and now, now this, shoulders digging into the mattress, head back, thrusting into his own grip, remembering that oak strength bent against him, pinning him, holding him so easily, pushing all the sounds down to his core, feeling everything the more intensely on each muffled, fiery breath, Lord, yes, _yes! Ohhh!_

He maintains just enough sensibility to cup his hand hard over himself, then bring the other in to contain the flood. Saints have mercy – should have thought this out better in advance, had a handkerchief to hand. And it’s a wheezing gasp of panting laughter, near-silent, a glow ringing through him like a bell-struck glory of brass and sunlight and hell, just lick it up, you daft heathen, feeling ashamed that you don’t feel more shame, loving this taste, not like him, not like them, but just enough like, and dreams will come, clean yourself up, deo gracias, sancta maria, mater dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, nunc, nunc dimittis, dormite, dormias, dormio, cesso, to sleep, perchance to dream…

Wherefore art thou… and he breathes his name onto the air which quivers into stillness at last; rolls, sinks, sleeps like a child.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve chosen 4th April because it has a Saint’s Day in the Catholic Calendar, and the tulips in the TV show give the impression that Porthos’s birthday is in April. The Saint is [Isidore](https://mycatholic.life/saints/saints-of-the-liturgical-year/april-4-saint-isidore-bishop-and-doctor-of-the-church/), a right old nerd, who’s been suggested as Patron Saint of the Internet because he freakin knew _everything_.
> 
> I’ve taken fewer liberties with the Monastic Offices than you might think.


End file.
